UK Politics - a new thread for the new board

[Stannis Eats No Peaches]

I'll be voting to stay (although I'm actually going to be on holiday on the day of the referendum, so I don't yet know how that's going to work). I think it's pretty important that we have a say in how Europe works.

[ab aeterno]

44 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

But you don't need common migration or legal policies to have trade alliances.

You need a certain amount of common standards/regulation though, for example, food standards, health regulation, technical standards, and a certain level of standardised legal framework to allow companies and individuals to do business across jurisdictions. 

ETA: Permanent migration might not be necessary, but a free flow of people along with goods makes sense. if you can trade in materials, why not trade in expertise? 

[SeanF]

The UK has, on its own, the World's 5th or 6th largest economy, in dollar terms. It will be an attractive trading partner inside or outside the EU.

Should have said 10th by GDP PPP but yeah, 5th or 6th nominally.

Of course it will be an attractive trading partner, but not so attractive that the US, EU, China, or anyone else will have any need to pander to what Britain wants. Those countries/blocks, accounting for around about $46tn in GPD compared to $2.6tn, will set the terms of any discussion and debate. Leaving doesn't make Britain unattractive, it just removes basically all its leverage.

ETA: $43.5tn minus the UK.

I'd say the direction of travel worldwide, since WWII, has been for the number of States to multiply, rather than to merge into larger units.

By direction of travel, I'm not taking about states merging into larger units, I'm talking about globalisation and standardisation of rules and regulations. ECC, EU, EFTA, NAFTA CAFTA, ASEAN free trade area, TPP, TTIP. etc.

No one panders to each other. People trade with each other based purely on mutual self-interest, as Adam Smith pointed out. The UK was a rich country prior to joining the EU and will remain a rich country, whether or not it's part of the EU.

[ab aeterno]

22 minutes ago, SeanF said:

No one panders to each other. People trade with each other based purely on mutual self-interest, as Adam Smith pointed out. The UK was a rich country prior to joining the EU and will remain a rich country, whether or not it's part of the EU.

Exactly. No-one panders to the whims of other states, they reach agreements based on mutual self-interest moderated by the balance of power in the relationship. For the same reason that Britain during the height of its empire was largely able to dictate terms of agreements to other nations, the larger, more powerful (in a political and/or economic sense,) states and bodies are able to dictate the terms of trade agreements today.

The smaller states can still make their case, and obviously they would just refuse is the offer was too unbalanced, but their bargaining power is relatively lacklustre; they have to take what they can get, whereas the stronger states can get what they want.

Britain is relatively powerful compared to most countries, but relatively weak compared to the US, EU and China, (as demonstrated by all the Chinese trade announcements during the state visit last year.) The US and China would determine the terms according to their interests, and the terms of trade with the EU would in all likelihood be virtually identical to those that exist now - there would be no real reason for the EU to offer better terms once Britain left.

That still means that Britain would be able to assert greater influence in trade negotiations with states smaller than itself, of course, but if those states are part of TPP, for example, Britain would essentially be obliged to confirm to the terms of trade from TPP.

The UK would certainly remain rich after leaving, I don't dispute that, but it's negotiating power would be lessened - and would arguably be lesser than prior to joining the EU because the country no longer has the same strong trade ties with Australia, New Zealand and many other former Imperial territories. 

[Maltaran]

56 minutes ago, Stannis Eats No Peaches said:

I'll be voting to stay (although I'm actually going to be on holiday on the day of the referendum, so I don't yet know how that's going to work). I think it's pretty important that we have a say in how Europe works.

Get yourself a postal vote, or else go to your polling station at 7am when it opens.

[HexMachina]

2 hours ago, Stannis Eats No Peaches said:

I'll be voting to stay (although I'm actually going to be on holiday on the day of the referendum, so I don't yet know how that's going to work). I think it's pretty important that we have a say in how Europe works.

What Maltaran said, register for postal voting. In fact you should do it anyway, since it's so much more convenient.

[TerraPrime]

7 hours ago, Werthead said:

Staying the EU leaves Britain more vulnerable to Paris-style terror attacks, says Ian Duncan Smith.

Interesting. Pan-European law enforcement cooperation is generally held to have been important in stopping multiple terror attacks. The European Arrest Warrant also made it possible for Hussein Osman (one of the 21/7 bombers) to be arrested in Rome and shipped back to the UK with almost no fuss as opposed to a lengthy, expensive extradition trial.

Good to see that IDS is in charge of the facts in this campaign as he is when it comes to dealing with benefits and welfare.

 

 

So, "brown people are scary" is a thing over in UK too eh?

[mormont]

Always has been.

Another interesting wrinkle a friend pointed out is that London, compared the rest of England, shows reasonably strong support for remaining in the EU. Yet the Tory candidate for mayor, Zac Goldsmith, is anti-EU. So he could wind up spending quite a lot of time before the Mayoral election explaining to prospective voters why they're wrong about a major issue. Never a popular strategy.

[Werthead]

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Or perhaps Britain is setting a trend once more, with more and more countries to follow in the century to come. It is becoming increasingly apparent that massive multicultural nation states are not able to reconcile the needs of all their increasingly diverse constituents.

Maybe the future is the opposite of One World Order. Maybe as Syria breaks up, so does Iraq, so does India, so does the entire EU, and within the EU, so does Spain even further, as does Italy, and outside the EU,  Canada, and Nigeria, heck, maybe so does the United States.

Maybe the future is 500 smaller countries, instead of the 200 of today. Each playing their independent part in the global picture.

There hasn't really been any sign of this. All the evidence points towards increased globalisation of markets and increased interdependency between nations. Where nation states have broken down, it's where those nations were artifically created by drawing arbritary lines on a map (Iraq and Syria) or through administrative reasons (Czechoslovakia, fortunately peacefully or Yugoslavia, not so much). It is indeed possible that we will see a break-up of countries like the United States, where political-cultural differences between certain states may be becoming too wide to bridge, or China where several of its territories are effectively conquered states under occupation, but these aren't because of some worldwide economic drive towards independence but of simple nationalism and culture.

One of the problems of the Brexit argument, one we are seeing repeated now across the spectrum of people wanting to leave, is that it acknowledges that Britain will be significantly worse off outside the EU but effectively they don't care (cue Spitfires flying over the white cliffs of Dover etc), mainly because the people at the top of the campaign arguing for it are all quite rich. With our economy in the state it's in (starting to teeter back towards recession), risking a financial collapse that dwarfs 2008 for the sake of xenophobia seems extraordinarily unwise. Or, indeed, "batshit insane".

[The Marquis de Leech]

Pardon me if I don't shed any tears for British agriculture losing EU subsidies. We've been doing without subsidies for thirty years now, and we can still function - and agriculture is far more important to our economy than the UK's.

[SeanF]

22 minutes ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

Pardon me if I don't shed any tears for British agriculture losing EU subsidies. We've been doing without subsidies for thirty years now, and we can still function - and agriculture is far more important to our economy than the UK's.

Agriculture is now just 0.7% of UK GDP.  The problem with agricultural subsidies is that they cause over-production.  Hence, all the arguments over "wine lakes" and "butter mountains."

Given that the UK is a substantial net contributor to the EU, it's only being paid back its own money, in terms of agricultural subsidies.

[SeanF]

The importance of Gove declaring for Leave is that many other centrist Conservative MPs are now willing to do so, rather than just leaving it to 60-70 rightwingers.

[Chaircat Meow]

How big a role do people think Boris will play in the referendum. Is he planning to take charge of the leave side or not?

[mormont]

1 hour ago, SeanF said:

Agriculture is now just 0.7% of UK GDP.  The problem with agricultural subsidies is that they cause over-production.  Hence, all the arguments over "wine lakes" and "butter mountains."

Given that the UK is a substantial net contributor to the EU, it's only being paid back its own money, in terms of agricultural subsidies.

I was under the impression that the government have made clear that they don't intend to replace the EU subsidy, though. So if that money is coming back, it's not being spent on agriculture. So the point still stands.

[Maltaran]

1 hour ago, Chaircat Meow said:

How big a role do people think Boris will play in the referendum. Is he planning to take charge of the leave side or not?

I doubt it - he's said he won't share a platform with Farage or Galloway and he won't debate against other Tories. IMO this move is mostly positioning himself for the leadership contest after Cameron resigns.

[Werthead]

Quote

Pardon me if I don't shed any tears for British agriculture losing EU subsidies. We've been doing without subsidies for thirty years now, and we can still function - and agriculture is far more important to our economy than the UK's.

Yes, this is the fault of successive Tory and Labour governments going back generations for not doing more to promote and protect British agriculture. It's something that should have been fixed years ago and no-one could be bothered to do it. Exactly why people who want independence from Europe have actively made us more dependent on food imports and and why now they want to make us completely dependent on food imports is yet something else Brexiters have failed to address, at all. Curious, as it seems to be diametrically opposed to their stated viewpoint of greater independence for the UK.

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How big a role do people think Boris will play in the referendum. Is he planning to take charge of the leave side or not?

As Malt says no, this is naked jockeying for power. In fact, Johnson was saying just a few weeks ago that he was going to vote to stay to promote the City of London and business interests. His decision to vote to leave, conveniently, came after talking to Tory MPs (such as Gove) to get their feeling on whether they'd back him for PM how he should lean.

Looking at the situation again, I think Johnson's motives are a bit clearer. He's just lost the Heathrow argument, which was a bit of a blow, and he'll soon be out of his job (and public eye) as Mayor of London. He's also seen how the fortunes of Osborne have dipped (a shoe-in for leader a few years ago, now wouldn't be trusted to run a piss up in a brewery). Whilst it would be on the surface safer to wait three years and then campaign for leader, he may also be doing so then from a much less prominent position and possibly after other, as yet-unrecognised rival candidates have emerged. If he moves right now, his only likely credible opponent will be May, who like Cameron will be damaged from losing a vote she has supported, and the only other even vague candidate on the horizon is Gove in terms of name-recognition, who seems to have aligned himself with Johnson already. If he can sell it as a principled move (agreeing not to argue with the PM or Tory colleagues in public was quite canny) he could still survive losing the argument and stage a comeback in 2019/20 anyway.

[Chaircat Meow]

The UK has been dependent on food imports for ages, going back into the nineteenth-century. View was/is the UK produced other stuff and just bought the food elsewhere. I tend to subscribe to the view that British liberalism's infatuation with free trade was quite a bad thing (and responsible for some of our industrial decline, wrt Germany, and the USA) but I don't really see what this has to do with Brexit.   

Thanks for the low down on Boris - I can't be bothered following Tory internal shenanigans much myself.  

[polishgenius]

6 minutes ago, Chaircat Meow said:

Thanks for the low down on Boris - I can't be bothered following Tory internal shenanigans much myself.  

 

 

You should. For anyone who wants the left to win elections, Boris is A Problem.

[Chaircat Meow]

Well I don't want the left to win elections.

 

[polishgenius]

Fair enough.

Although more accurately for anyone who wants anyone other than the Tories to win (or just do well at) elections, at least the next one, Boris is a problem.